🕹️ Virtual Science Arcade

Discovery Zone Exhibits

Active learning through tactile simulations. Play our 4 specialized, curator-designed interactive games to explore pinniped physiology, subarctic survival, skeletal articulation, and avian recolonization.

Round of 3

💡 Field Identifier Tip:
🟢 Correct! +100 Points 🔴 Incorrect! The field guides say otherwise.

🏆

Diagnostic Evaluation Complete

You earned out of a maximum 300 points!

Excavation Grid (5x5)

Click boxes to dig/excavate chambers and build a secure subnivean den.

Subnivean Snow Cave Architect

Help a newborn **Ringed Seal pup** survive sub-zero winds and predators. Excavate a warm snow chamber (den) directly above its ice breathing hole 🦭, but **do not dig too close to the surface** or the roof will collapse under foxes and polar bears!

🔥 Insulation Density
🦊 Roof Fragility / Predator Risk
🎉 **Perfect Architecture!** The cave is warm and insulated, and the roof is thick enough to shield the seal pup from polar bears. Success!
⚠️ **Danger!** The roof is too thin. Predators on top of the pack-ice can easily smell and cave-in the den ceiling! Add snow blocks back to the top.
❄️ **Too Cold!** The cave is too small. Dig out more room cells to build a comfortable resting platform for the pup.
🐞 Stage 1: Dermestid Cleaning 🧪 Stage 2: Maceration Wash 🦴 Stage 3: Skeletal Articulation

Skeletal Cleaning: Dermestid Beetles

Geriatric sea lion Woody's massive 2,400lb skeleton must be articulated. First, deploy flesh-eating **Dermestid beetles** to delicately clean soft tissue from the bones without damaging vital growth markers.

Tissue Cleared

The Maceration Barrel

Now, the bones must be placed in a hot water maceration barrel to wash out remaining lipids. Use the slider to balance the barrel heater. **Keep temperature strictly between 70°C and 85°C** to soften cartilages without boiling or cracking the bones.

40°C (Cold) 75°C (Ideal) 100°C (Boiling)
♨️ **Optimal Temperature!** Maceration successfully cleaning lipids...
❄️ Temperature is too low. Lipids will not wash out. Increase heater.
💥 **Boiling Alert!** Bones risk cracking! Reduce heater dial.

Skeletal Articulation

Click the cleaned skeletal segments below to articulate Woody's 2,400lb frame! Watch them snap together to recreate this historic Steller sea lion specimen.

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Woody's Articulation Ledger of 4 Articulated
🏆 **Assembly Complete!** Woody's fully articulated 2,400-pound frame is now ready for educational displays at Pioneer Hall! Amazing job.

Puffin Colony Recolonization

Use your **$1,000 restoration budget** to strategically place hand-painted resin decoys, playbacks, and mirrors on cliff ledges to attract wild puffins back to nesting sites.

🎨 Resin Decoys $150 each • Visual Attraction
🔊 Vocal Playback Speaker $200 each • Acoustic Attraction
🪞 Nesting Mirrors $100 each • Social Amplification
Remaining Budget
Coloy Attraction
🎨 Decoys Placed:
🔊 Speakers Placed:
🪞 Mirrors Placed:
🎉 **Excellent Strategy!** Puffins have returned in droves, establishing new nesting burrows on the cliff side. Success!
📈 **Attraction Active.** Puffins are circling the cliffs. Expand visual decoys and social mirrors to secure the colony.
Empty cliffs. Deploy resin puffins to start the attraction loop!